First  Design  Iteration

4.4.1  Objectives    

1. To  get  a  list  of  the  tools  the  participants’  as  end-­‐users  would  want  to  use  most  on   the  mobile  phone.  

2. To  get  a  first  approximation  of  the  design  problems  the  participants’  associate  with   the  existing  Vula  Mobile  interface  through  a  collaborative  discussion  and  conceptual   model  extraction  on  a  sample  storyboard  accomplished  using  the  SAKAI  mobile   interface.    

3. To  get  the  participants  to  design  interfaces  supporting  the  access  to  tools  they  had   previously  identified  as  being  most  useful  on  mobile  devices  

  4.4.2Preliminary    

Prior  the  day  of  the  workshop  participants  were  asked  to  consider  the  following  aspects  of  the  SAKAI   mobile  access  portal:  

I. What  they  liked  about  using  the  SAKAI  mobile  access  portal?  

II. What  they  did  not  like  about  using  the  SAKAI  mobile  access  portal?  

A  short  statement  of  the  workshops  purpose  was  indicated  allowing  the  participants  to  think  of   issues  relating  to  the  usability  of  the  SAKAI  mobile  portal  ahead  of  the  actual  workshop  if  they  so   wished.  

The  researcher  secured  a  room  from  which  the  workshop  could  be  run.    Care  was  taken  to  ensure   that  the  room  had  a  chalkboard,  whiteboards  and  sufficient  table  space.  This  was  done  to  allow  the   participants  to  have  adequate  writing  materials  to  express  their  design  ideas.  The  choice  was  made   to  have  the  participants  make  initial  designs  on  the  chalkboards  and  whiteboards  as  this  made  it   easier  for  them  to  collaborate  as  opposed  to  writing  on  small  pieces  of  paper.  The  researcher  was   then  tasked  with  transferring  these  designs  to  paper  prototypes.    

On  the  day  of  the  test  the  researcher  who  acted  in  the  role  of  facilitator  used  the  following  steps  to   run  the  workshop:  

1. Welcome:  The  facilitator  welcomed  participants  and  thanked  them  for  being  part  of  the   study.  The  participants  introduced  themselves.  Information  packets  (see  Appendix2)  relating   to  the  workshop  were  passed  out  to  each  participant.  

2. Introduction:  The  purpose  of  the  study  was  explained  and  this  was  also  included  in  the   information  packet  and  participants  were  encouraged  to  read  it.    

3. Agenda:  The  agenda  will  be  presented  to  the  users  with  the  outline  of  the  tasks  being  given   to  give  the  users  an  impression  of  what  they  will  be  doing  without  giving  out  information  on   that  would  affect  the  outcomes  of  any  of  the  tasks.  

4. Consent  form:  In  view  of  the  provided  information  participants  who  are  no  longer  willing  to   take  part  in  the  study  are  given  an  opportunity  to  leave  and  the  facilitator  informs  the  

participants  that  they  will  be  allowed  to  leave  at  any  stage.  Consenting  participants  are  then   required  to  sign  the  consent  form.  

5. Task  Based  Questions:  The  tasks  were  then  conducted.  

4.4.3  Results    

Objective  1  

The  results  for  the  tasks  in  Appendix  2  as  performed  by  the  users  in  the  workshop  are  presented  in   this  section.  The  aim  of  this  task  was  to  identify  which  tools  the  users’  would  want  to  make  use  of  on   mobile  devices.    Though  not  indicated  here  the  researcher  noted  that  when  students  were  asked   they  consistently  wanted  to  use  fewer  tools  from  the  Vula  system  on  mobile  as  compared  to  the   Desktop.  

  Figure 12: Students’ preferred tools for mobile display  

The  results  from  the  four  users  present  in  the  workshop  for  this  objective  were  combined  with   results  from  eleven  other  Science  students  who  gave  feedback  in  impromptu  interviews  using  the   tool  familiarity  section  only  from  Appendix  2.  This  was  done  to  allow  the  researcher  to  be  able  to  see   the  points  of  view  of  a  wider  group  of  students  than  just  the  four  who  were  at  the  workshop  (the   description  of  each  tools  function  can  be  found  in  Appendix  1).  The  results  of  these  surveys  are   presented  in  Figure  12.    

Objective  2  

This  objective  was  not  meant  to  assess  the  entire  SAKAI  mobile  access  portal  but  just  to  get  an   impression  of  what  the  participants’  reactions  to  it  were.  As  a  result,  this  analysis  did  not  go  into   detail.  The  screens  that  were  shown  represented  the  screen  transitions  from  when  the  first  screen  of   SAKAI  portal  is  accessed  to  when  the  course  tools  for  a  course  are  presented.  The  course  screen  to   be  presented  in  this  sequence  was  picked  arbitrarily  and  is  shown  in  Appendix  2  in  the  Sakai  Mobile   Portal  section.  

Users  were  asked  to  describe  the  screens  of  the  SAKAI  mobile  access  portal  shown  in  Appendix  2.    

The  users  were  to  put  particular  emphasis  on  things  they  liked  or  did  not  like  and  what  they  thought   the  functions  displayed  did.  Some  of  the  comments  are  shown  below  ordered  by  screen  title:  

Mobile  Access  Point:    Most  users  felt  that  this  screen  was  unnecessary  as  the  functions  it  accessed   apart  from  the  login  option  were  seldom  used.    A  participant  is  quoted  here  commenting  to  that   effect  “Please  put  text  boxes  for  quick  login”.  This  type  of  feeling  was  mirrored  by  other  participants   who  thought  this  screen  could  just  be  replaced  with  the  login  screen.  Participants  did  however   mention  attempts  at  using  the  ‘Reset  Password’  option  and  commenting  on  how  it  did  not  work.  

Login  screen:    The  participants  thought  this  screen  was  well  designed.  Many  thought  that  this  screen   should  be  the  first  screen  the  user  meets  when  attempting  to  access  Vula  on  mobile.  

Home  screen:  The  participants  thought  this  screen  was  also  well  designed.  As  it  showed  the  courses   that  the  user  could  access.  

Course  screen:  The  participants  thought  this  screen  was  well  designed  but  they  did  note  that  it  took   time  to  access  the  tools  they  wanted  as  there  were  quite  a  number  of  tools  on  display  and  this   necessitated  scrolling  down  the  page  to  find  desired  tools.  They  felt  that  some  of  the  tools  displayed   could  be  classified  as  ‘noise’  as  they  were  tools  they  would  probably  never  interact  with  but  still   needed  to  pass  through  to  get  to  what  they  wanted.  

Objective  3  

Participants  were  then  tasked  with  performing  a  ground  up  design  of  the  screens  that  would  access   the  tools  that  they  decided  were  most  important.  As  far  as  was  possible  the  participants  were  asked   to  collaborate  and  motivate  the  inclusion  of  each  screen  element  and  the  layout  chosen.    

The  results  of  this  task  where  put  together  and  the  researcher  drew  up  low  fidelity  prototypes  based   on  what  the  participants  had  designed  on  the  white  board.  Figure  13  below  shows  participants   collaborating  to  design  screens  as  part  of  this  task.  

  Figure 13: Participants collaborating to design screens  

The  section  that  follows  documents  the  screens  that  were  designed  by  the  focus  group  the  rationale   behind  their  layout  and  their  purpose.  Figure  14  shows  all  the  prototypes  obtained.  These  

prototypes  will  be  explained  in  the  following  section  in  the  order  that  they  appear  in  Figure  14.  

Figure 14: Paper prototypes showing the login screen, home page and course site shown from left to right  

Login  screen:  This  was  intended  to  be  the  first  screen  the  user  encountered  when  using  the  system.  

This  screen  asked  for  the  user  details  that  would  grant  a  user  the  access  to  the  Vula  system.  The   prototype  of  this  screen  is  shown  in  Figure  14.  

The  page  was  stripped  of  all  tools  that  are  not  directly  related  to  the  task  of  logging  in.  The  system   was  reduced  to  username  field,  password  field,  a  login  button  and  an  option  to  change  password.    

Home  page:  This  screen  is  reached  after  user  successfully  logs  in.  It  gives  a  broad  overview  of  the   functions  that  are  available  to  the  user.  The  screen  designed  is  shown  in  Figure  14.  

The  page  shows  all  the  broad  definitions  of  the  functions  that  the  interface  will  be  able  to  support.  

The  page  shows  list  elements  representing  the  following  functions:  announcements,  grades  and  a  list   of  all  available  courses  below  that.    

Announcements:  This  was  added  by  the  participants  as  they  felt  it  would  be  a  good  function  to  be   able  to  see  an  aggregated  view  of  the  announcements  across  all  courses  on  one  list.  The  goal  of  this   was  to  allow  the  user  to  have  an  overview  of  all  course  announcements  in  one  location.  

Grades:    This  was  added  by  participants  as  they  felt  it  would  help  to  have  an  aggregated  view  of  all   the  grades  the  user  had  obtained  across  all  courses.  

Course  name:    Selecting  a  course  name  for  instance  MAM1000  would  expose  all  the  tools  of  interest   available  for  that  course.  In  Figure  14  MAM1000  is  shown  with  the  Announcement  and  Grades  tools   available  for  selection.  

4.4.4  Summary      

In  the  first  iteration  of  the  design  process  the  designer  sought  to  get  an  understanding  of  the  kind  of   tools  students  would  like  to  use  on  the  mobile  device.  The  most  popular  tools  for  considered  for   addition  in  our  interface  were  found  to  be  Announcements,  Grade  Book  and  Resources.  After   tasking  the  user  with  evaluating  the  SAKAI  mobile  access  portal  the  researcher  managed  to  get   insight  on  the  kind  of  experiences  did  not  like,  for  example  the  researcher  learnt  that  users  do  not   enjoy  looking  through  long  lists  of  tools  on  mobile  devices.    

The  participants  were  then  asked  to  design  an  outline  of  the  kind  of  screen  interactions  they  would   expect  from  an  ideal  system.  These  designs  were  carried  out  collaboratively  on  the  white  board  and   the  results  were  transferred  to  paper  prototypes  by  the  researcher.